I began writing about Harry Houdini and his association with Weird Tales nearly six months ago, on January 30, 2024. The occasion was the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Houdini issues of "The Unique Magazine." There were three Houdini issues in all. The first came along in March 1924. The last was the first-anniversary number of May/June/July 1924. So, even though nearly half a year has gone by since I first wrote on this topic, we're still in the Houdini-issue centenary.
Although Houdini's byline was attached to three stories in Weird Tales, he almost certainly did not write any of them. These three stories are:
"Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," also known as "Under the Pyramids" and "Entombed with the Pharaohs," is known to have been ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft. If readers didn't know about it before, Lovecraft's authorship of the story was revealed when it was reprinted in the July 1939 issue of Weird Tales. By then, the magazine was printing and reprinting everything it could by Lovecraft. After all, he had been their bread and butter for many years. I have proposed Otis Adelbert Kline as the author of "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt." John Locke has put forth Harold Ward as the author of "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover."
There were other connections between Houdini and Weird Tales. I wonder about the possibility that Kline, as a possible or the probable author of non-fiction fillers in the magazine, borrowed from Houdini a copy of The Terrific Register; or, Record of Crimes, Judgements, Providences, and Calamities, published in two volumes in 1825, as his source. I don't know that Kline was in fact the author of those fillers. I also don't know that Houdini owned those two volumes. And I don't know whether there was any borrowing going on.
Houdini is supposed to have been the author of two installments of a letters column called "Ask Houdini." I would not rule out that the first was not Houdini's work after all. At least a couple of letters may have been plants, for they bear Harold Ward's initials and originated in or near northern Illinois towns where Ward lived or worked. The second installment reads more like something that came from Houdini's pen. We will probably never know who were the writers of the twenty-two letters that appeared in "Ask Houdini." I suspect that comparing initials to known authors in Weird Tales would lead to some candidates.
Among Houdini's other published works of 1924 was the book A Magician Among the Spirits, which came out in May of that year. C.M. Eddy, Jr., of Providence, Rhode Island, was the uncredited co-author or ghostwriter of that book. According to Wikipedia: "In 1926, Harry Houdini hired H.P. Lovecraft and his friend C.M. Eddy, Jr., to write an entire book about debunking religious miracles, which was to be called The Cancer of Superstition." That project fell through upon Houdini's death later in the year.
Like Edgar Allan Poe, the Great Houdini died in October, in his case on Halloween, October 31, 1926. If Poe died by violence, then maybe they had that in common, too, for Houdini died of peritonitis, possibly brought on by appendicitis and a blow or blows to the abdomen.
Houdini's brother was also a magician, escape artist, and debunker of spiritualism. His birth name was Ferenc Dezső Weisz, but he was known as Theodore "Dash" Hardeen. The brothers performed together early on. Hardeen continued performing after Houdini's death. He was on stage in Hellzapoppin in 1938-1941. In 1936, Hardeen played a detective investigating a fake medium in a movie short called Medium Well Done It. Houdini's wife, Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess" (Rahner) Houdini, was also in movies--or a movie, Religious Racketeers, released in 1938. The movie begins one day short of the ten-year anniversary of Houdini's death. Bess Houdini played herself. Also in the cast was Helen Le Berthon, daughter of Ted Le Berthon, who also wrote for Weird Tales. As in Houdini's career, the subjects of Religious Racketeers are spiritualism and fake mediums. Another connection to Edgar Allan Poe: Houdini and his wife had agreed to communicate, if possible, by way of a substitution code, as in "The Gold-Bug," after his death. Their coded message: "Believe."
The biographies of Houdini and his wife were adapted to film in 1953, with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in the lead roles, and again in 1976 with Paul Michael Glaser and Sally Struthers. We watched The Great Houdini, also called The Great Houdinis, on television when we were kids. I have always remembered the scene and the terrible tragedy of Houdini receiving blows to his abdomen and dying from his injuries.
What grief. What terrible grief. But there was triumph, too, and imperishable love.
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| "Do Spirits Return?", a poster advertising shows by Houdini at the Lyceum Theatre, Paterson, New Jersey, on September 2 through 4, presumably in 1920. |
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
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